Sunday, September 25, 2016

Scholars of language and rhetoric have for long identified
certain words and expressions that instinctively evoke warm fuzzy feelings in people,
that effortlessly sway opinions, and that galvanize people into action. The words
are often so broad and so semantically indeterminate that anyone can read any
positive meaning into them. In other words, they are clean semantic slates on
which people inscribe whatever positive attributes they want.

American rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke called such words
“god terms.” In his book titled A Grammar
of Motives, Burke describes god terms as the “names for the ultimates of
motivation.” They are words that are unquestioningly sanctified by a cultural
community, which inspire and drive them to act in a certain way.

Another American rhetorician by the name of Richard Weaver
expanded on Burke’s notion of god terms. In his book titled The Ethics of Rhetoric, Weaver defined a
“god term” as a “rhetorical absolute” with “inherent potency,” that is, an
inherently vague term that most people in a society, culture, and age associate
with affirmative attributes and for which they are prepared to make sacrifices.

Words like “justice,” “democracy,” “progress,”
“accountability,” “good governance,” “transparency,” “change,” etc. are examples
of god terms. They are vague enough to defy semantic precision yet likeable
enough to attract positive cognitive and emotional associations. The words are used by public relations
experts, advertisers, politicians, and other kinds of professionals in the mind
management industry to persuade people to pursue predetermined courses of
actions such as buying a product, voting for a candidate, having a certain kind
of opinion or attitude toward a person, a company, or a cause.

God terms are often so universally positive that their
underlying assumptions are undisputed, even if they are ill-defined. Who argues
with “progress”? Who doesn’t want “justice”? Who resists “democracy”? Who
rejects the virtues of “good governance”? Who doesn’t cherish “transparency”? However,
although our culture predisposes us to automatically process these terms as
invariably positive, we have no precise meanings of the terms, and that’s why
they are powerful instruments of persuasion. The best propaganda is one that
isn’t suspected as one, and that creatively taps from the cultural consensus of
the society.

Devil terms

But there is also something called the “devil term.” A devil
term is a word that evokes revulsion in us, that dislocates our sense of
emotional balance, and that mindlessly activates negative feelings in us. The
most popular devil term of the last two decades is the word “terrorism”—and its
many inflectional extensions such as “terrorist,” “terroristic,” “terrorize,”
etc.

In Nigeria, “sentiments,” “tribalistic,” “unpatriotic,” etc.
have become devil terms. The painfully idiotic expression “wailing wailer” (or
“wailer,” which simply means a critic of President Buhari) has also now become
a devil term among hordes of low-wattage Buhari partisans on social media.

God terms that are overused, that have exhausted their
persuasive power, or that have reached the end of their rhetorical shelf life
can transmogrify into devil terms. For example, in the United States, “liberal”
went from being a god term to a devil term, no thanks to the propaganda of
conservatives who successfully cast liberals as unpatriotic. Now politically
and culturally liberal Americans call themselves “progressives.”

Even in northern
Nigeria, “liberal” has transmuted from a god term into a devil term. This
connotational transmutation explains why Kaduna State changed its license-plate
slogan from “liberal state” to “center of learning.”

The term “political correctness” used to be a god term. It
meant social sensitivity, especially in language use, toward marginal groups in
the society. Now it has become a devil term that means underhand, Orwellian
censorship of free speech.

“Change” as a God
Term

The term “change” is historically a powerful god term in
politics. It is thought to have endless rhetorical utility, and its invocation
especially in moments of great national stress can be enormously potent. A few
examples from US political history illustrate this.

Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign slogan was, "Some
People Talk Change, Others Cause It." He lost to his opponent, Richard
Nixon, by a painfully narrow margin—what some analysts called by “seven-tenths
of a percentage point.” Well, perhaps it was because Humphrey was the incumbent
vice president who represented the old order, or because he was ambivalent
about change. He dismissed people who “talked” about it and cast himself as
someone who “caused” it.

God terms are supposed to be vague and devoid of
concreteness to be effective. Voters’ material conditions probably reminded
them that the government Humphrey was a part of didn’t “cause” the kind of “change”
they identified with, so they chose to stick with “some people who talk change,”
even if it was an indeterminate change.

In 1976 Jimmy Carter won election as America’s 39th
president, and his campaign slogan was, "A Leader, For a Change."
However, his administration came to be beset by runaway inflation and a biting
recession, much like Buhari’s is shaping up to be, and he became thoroughly unpopular
by the end of his first term. Ronald Reagan defeated him in a landslide in 1980
with the campaign slogan, "Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years
Ago?"

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan, "It's Time to
Change America," resonated with Americans, and helped him to handily
defeat George Bush Sr., ending 12 uninterrupted years of Republican rule.

Sixteen years later, Barack Obama reengaged with the
persuasive arsenal of “change” with the slogan “Change We Can Believe In” (or
just "Change”), and won a massive victory against John McCain.

In Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari caused an unprecedented
political upset by defeating an incumbent president through his deployment of
the “change” slogan.

When “Change” Becomes
a Devil Term

Judging from the vast disillusionment that the Buhari
administration has instigated in Nigerians so far, “change” may become a “devil
term” in Nigeria by 2019, if it hasn’t already become one.

Change has now come to be associated with lies, deceit,
hypocrisy, double standards, endless whining and blame shifting by people in
government, descent from bad to worse in living conditions, incompetence in
high places, unpreparedness, astonishing elite insensitivity, economic and
social bondage, pauperization, reverse Robin Hoodism (which I once defined as
robbing of the poor to enrich the rich), personalization of power, extreme
nepotism and provincialism, facile and arrogant disavowal of promises made
during campaigns, etc.

These are all
attributes the current “change” administration embodies in colossal measure,
which will certainly cause the “change” slogan to become irretrievably damaged
in Nigeria’s linguistic, rhetorical, and political landscape.

Perhaps the greatest violence to the notion of “change” in
Nigeria is the “ChangeBeginsWithMe” campaign whose conception and execution
ironically undermine its very notional core. The campaign was irreparably
marred by two grave legal and ethical infractions that bordered on barefaced
intellectual theft. The concept itself is the appropriation of somebody’s copyright.
That’s a legal infraction. The speech that formally introduced it to Nigerians plagiarized
an entire paragraph from Obama’s speech. That’s an ethical infraction.

The campaign has now deservedly become the object of scorn, derision
and anger, especially because government officials who champion it are steeped
in the old ways while calling people who are already down and out to “change.”

An old woman I spoke to in Nigeria last Friday, who is a
staunch Buhari supporter, captured Buhari’s “change” this way: Unhappy occupants
of a leaky house hired the services of a new builder (Buhari) to repair their
roof. The builder decided to take down the entire roof in order to rebuild
it. But after taking the roof down, the builder is out of his depth, and has no
clue how to put it together again.

Now he blames everything and everybody— from his tools to
previous builders who put the roof together—for his incompetence and
cluelessness. Meanwhile, the occupants of the house who thought being wet from
their leaky roof during rains was bad now have to contend with being thoroughly
drenched from the rains since they now have no roof at all.

No one in Nigeria will ever campaign again on a platform of “change.”
The word is now an irredeemably damaged slogan. Its persuasive content has been
depleted. When next a politician or a political party promises “change,” people
would most certainly ask: What “change” do you mean? Change from what to what?
From bad to worse? Or change in the faces of people in power while the same old
order of corruption, cronyism, nepotism, impunity, intolerance, bigotry stays
intact? Is this another bait and switch?

When people begin to ask for the precise meaning of a god
term you know it’s no longer one. Or, worse, when a term evokes fear and
trepidation in people, you know it has graduated to a devil term. “Change” is
becoming a devil term in Nigeria.

When Richard Weaker said in the 1950s that "a society's
health or declension was mirrored in how it used language," he came across
as overly linguistically deterministic. The story of “change” in Nigeria
instantiates his assertion.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

I have avoided publicly joining issue with Malam Garba
Shehu, my former teacher at Bayero University Kano. For instance, on September
16, a well-known international broadcast organization requested that I grant
them an interview on an issue that would have pitted me against him. “I have
said to myself a long time ago that I would never do, write, or say anything
publicly to embarrass my former teachers, including Malam Garba, unless their
action is so absolutely detestable and so injurious to society that I can't
afford to ignore it. I am not sure this action rises to that level,” I wrote.

The reporter understood. You see, Malam Garba wasn’t just my
teacher; he was far and away my most influential journalism teacher for whom I
still have the profoundest respect. Although it’s been two decades since he
taught me in my final year, I still vividly remember so many invaluable gems of
journalistic wisdom I learned from him, which I repeat to my own students here
in America.

On his first day in class, for instance, he told us he was
“allergic to bad grammar.” We all thought that was a creatively humorous word
choice. I still remember his definition of news. He said, “news is the displacement
of routine; all else is PR.” He taught us to never be intimidated by
politicians, however highly placed they may be, when we interview them. “You
are not interviewing them in your personal capacity; you are doing so as a
representative of the public.”

I have never been
able to erase from my memory his admonition that “no piece of writing is so
good it can’t be improved upon.” I don’t know how many times I’ve said that to
my own students. It was also through him I first learned of former Washington
Post publisher Philip L. Graham’s famous definition of journalism as the “first
rough draft of history.”

When you have a teacher who has had such an enduring intellectual
and professional impact on you, it is hard, really hard, to disagree with him
publicly. This article is one of the most painful articles I’ve written in my
career. But I need to set the records straight for posterity.

First, I need to point out that the Vanguard report of June 6, which informed my commentary last week,
did NOT state that £6 million was used as the medical bill for Buhari’s ear
treatment. It said "Checks at the presidency claimed that, the cost of the
trip which includes aviation fuel, accommodation, allowances for aides and
medical treatment amounts to about £6 million."

What government needs to do is go beyond issuing a glib
denial; it should bring authentic, verifiable documentary evidence that shows
exactly how much was spent during the 14-day trip to London when Buhari’s ear
was treated. How many aircraft in the presidential fleet were taken to London?
How much did it cost to fuel them? What was the landing cost for keeping them
in London for 14 days? How many aides and government officials went to London
with the president? How much did their per diem (what we call “estacodes” in
Nigeria) cost the national treasury? What was the cost of accommodating and
feeding the coterie of aides and government officials that followed the
president to London? We already know, through Malam Garba, that the
president’s medical bill was about 50,000 pounds.

From my own informal observation, when you calculate the
cost of the trip—fueling of the aircraft in the presidential fleet, per diem
for aides and other government officials, etc. for two weeks.—there is no way
on earth that it wouldn’t add up to a few million pounds. No way.

Now, note that Vanguard claimed to have made
"checks" at the presidency, and nobody from the presidency denied it—for
more than three months after the fact! As I pointed out on Malam Garba’s
Facebook page, I am the first to admit that Vanguard
isn't always a reliable source of news (I have written at least two scathing
articles on it), but it's also true that Vanguard
is Nigeria's most visited online news source, outranked occasionally only by Punch, according to Alexa. You ignore it
at your own risk. Plus, the fact that it occasionally publishes stories that
turn out to be false doesn’t mean every single story it publishes is false.

Only unreflective Buhari apologists assume the falsity of
the Vanguard report without any shred
of contrary evidence other than a facile, reactive denial. People who work for
the president read all of Nigeria's major newspapers on a daily basis, and they
must have seen this story in the Vanguard
when it was first published. I know this trade well enough to know that if a
negative report goes unchallenged for more than 3 months, the report is
probably true—or at least has a grain of truth to it. People affected by it are
simply practicing the age-old PR principle of not reacting to a reputationally
harmful and embarrassing story so as not to lend it wings, in the hope that
people won't notice—until, of course, opinion molders pounce on it and make it
an issue.

Some people said I should have verified Vanguard's claims from the presidency before citing it. Why is that my responsibility when the presidency that is directly implicated by the report
hasn't denied it for more than three months? Which ethical journalistic canon
requires anyone to do that? Why do people cite the employment scandals of this
administration without first going to the presidency to verify their truth?

In any case, isn’t it the same presidency that reacts to
every inane, obscure attacks on the president even from the gaunt fringes of
the Internet? Didn't the presidency once issue a statement denying an
unmentioned libelous allegation that Radio Biafra made against Buhari, causing
the profile of the station and the cause it espouses to rise exponentially? If
it reacts to every irritation against the president, why didn't it react to a
report that makes the weighty claim that the president spent £6 million for his
London ear treatment trip?

But, most importantly, some people assume that just because
the presidency has denied the allegation, it must be false. That's unbelievably
shallow and credulous. First, Malam Garba Shehu's statement merely told us the
medical bill Buhari incurred for his ear treatment. It said nothing about the
cost of the entire trip. Never mind that on June 8, 2016, Femi Adesina actually said “The President did not go to London for treatment.” Now we
are told he spent “less than £50,000” for as his medical bill for ear
treatment.

Finally, can anybody in good conscience defend the action of
a president who allocated N4 billion to Aso Rock Clinic (which is more than the
budget of all Nigerian teaching hospitals combined) but goes abroad to treat an
ear infection less than a month after he banned government officials from
traveling abroad for medical treatment? Let's not allow our emotions to get the
better of our judgment!

Saturday, September 17, 2016

The Buhari government’s “Change Begins with Me”
campaign is perhaps the cheekiest bait-and-switch governmental scam in Nigerian
history. When I said this on Facebook last week, a few people thought I was
being harsh. But my choice of words is deliberate and well-advised.

Bait-and-switch
scams are kinds of confidence tricks where unsuspecting customers are lured
into (or “baited” to) an attractive, often too-good-to-be-true, offers. Once
the customers’ interest is sufficiently piqued, sustained, and won over, the
terms of the offer change (or “switch”). It’s an age-old scam in advertising
that the APC has brought to the political realm.

Buhari and APC baited Nigerians with a promise to “change”
the country from the rampant blight and cronyism of the past. After Nigerians
swallowed the bait and voted them into power, they have “switched” and now say
“change” begins with everyday Nigerians who voted them into power, not only
they who promised it. That’s straight-up dupery.

Even the campaign slogan is a scam. I am not talking
of the fact that the concept itself is the product of the shameless theft of
the intellectual labor of one Akin Fadeyi, according to the Premium Times of September 11, 2016, which is bad in itself; I am talking of
the campaign’s intentional semantic obfuscation. The real motive force behind
the campaign is the desire to deflect attention from the current government’s noticeable
unpreparedness to govern, from its cocktail of failures that daily conspire to push
the country to the edge of the precipice, and from the unwillingness of its
principal actors to give up an inch of their privileges to bring about the
change they promised.

The “me” in the slogan fraudulently seeks to
democratize the blame for the failures of the government.

As most people have pointed out, everybody else in
Nigeria has already changed or is prepared to change except people in
government. In the first few months of Buhari’s presidency, his supporters were
all fired up and ready to change, and even his opponents were in dread of the
changes they imagined would come from what they thought was an austere,
straight-talking, honest man.

But there has been no change. Instead, promises are
being changed. Take, for example, this iconic Buhari pre-election promise.

In February 2015, after the presidential election was
shiftily shifted by the Jonathan administration (using "insecurity"
as a convenient pretext) in a vain effort to ward off its impending electoral
loss (the precise thing that the Buhari administration is doing in Edo State
now), Buhari went to London to rest. While there, he addressed the Nigerian
community.

"One of the major killers of our economy, apart
from corruption, is waste,” Buhari said. “Let me give an instance: Presently,
there are more than 6 aircraft in the presidential fleet. What do you call
that? Billions of naira is budgeted every year for the maintenance of these
aircraft, not to talk of operational costs and other expenses.

“You may want to ask what a Nigerian President is doing
with so many aircraft when the Prime Minister of Britain flies around using the
same public aircraft like an ordinary Briton. Go and check and compare with
that of any developed country in the world: the office of the Nigerian
President is a very expensive one in spite of our high level of poverty, lack,
and joblessness. Despite all this, you still find a Nigerian minister spending
about N10 billion to charter an aircraft for just one year.

“Now, for me, when we come into office, all this waste
will be blocked and properly channelled into our economy. We intend, for
instance, to bring back our national carrier, the Nigerian Airways. We shall do
this by bringing all the aircraft in the presidential fleet into the Nigerian Airways
and within a year increase the fleet to about 20.

“What is the difference between me and those who
elected us to represent them? Absolutely nothing! Why should Nigerian president
not fly with other Nigerian public? Why do I need to embark on a foreign trip
as a president with a huge crowd with public fund? Why do I need to go for
foreign medical trip if we cannot make our hospital functional? Why do we need
to send our children to school abroad if we cannot develop our universities to
compete with the foreign ones? ... This is not my struggle. It is our collective
efforts to save Nigeria from those who have failed us for 16 years."

Admirable,
high-minded sentiments. Call them “baits,” if you like. But two years on, what
has changed? Well, he has sustained and, in some cases, doubled down on the
very things he railed against in this short speech. Call it a “switch.”

Nigeria's
indefensibly profligate presidential air fleet is still intact, and has cost
Nigeria nearly 20 billion naira to maintain since Buhari came to power,
according to aviation industry experts who spoke to the Punch. (The official figure is 5 billion naira, which is still unjustifiable,
especially at a time when millions of people can’t feed). By contrast, four
years ago, former Malawian president Joyce Banda discarded her presidential jet and luxury car fleet
to demonstrate that she meant change.

What is more, in direct contradiction to what he
promised, Buhari went to London a few months ago to check an ear infection that
was already treated in Nigeria “purely as a precaution,” according to his media
adviser—less than one month after he issued a policy proclamation that forbids
government officials from going on medical treatment abroad.

To boot, he
took the presidential air fleet along with him to London, and cost the nation,
by some accounts (which haven't been disproved by the presidency), 6 million
pounds. That's more than the money allocated to all Nigerian hospitals in the
current budget! Just for an ear infection!

You can’t be luxuriating in the outrageous prodigality
of the past and think you can talk to poor, starving people about “change.”
What change? Why should they change when you who promised them change haven’t
changed? Why should they change when APC now stands for All Promises Changed?

Change should begin with Buhari and other toadies in
government, and everybody else will be impelled to follow their footsteps. For
starters, Buhari should make good his promise to sell off the planes in the
presidential air fleet. He doesn’t need to set up a “committee” to do that.

I don’t hate
the Buhari administration. Millions of Nigerians, including me, supported its
emergence. I only absolutely detest the administration’s out-and-out hypocrisy
and incompetence, and will continue to be on its back until it changes.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Last week’s column titled “Ibrahim Waziri: From HND in Nigeria to PhD in America” recalled a column I wrote on December 27, 2009 on
the parity of esteem between polytechnic and university qualifications. Given
the interest last week’s column generated, I’ve decided to share a reworked and
updated version of the article:

If you are a Nigerian university graduate who has been
socialized into disdaining polytechnics as inferior higher education
institutions, think about this: Albert Einstein, the world’s most renowned
physicist and one of the most influential thinkers of all time, graduated from
the Zurich Polytechnic (now called the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Zurich) in 1900 with a diploma in mathematics and physics.

Unlike in Nigeria,
his diploma wasn’t a handicap to his pursuit of advanced degrees. He studied
for and earned his Ph.D. in experimental physics from the University of Zurich,
five years after his diploma. If a polytechnic produced one of the world’s
greatest thinkers, why are polytechnics so low on the totem pole of
post-secondary education in Nigeria? Why do we reserve ice-cold derision for
polytechnic qualifications?

Well, the answer lies
in the different philosophies that informed the establishment of polytechnics
in different countries. In the United States, “polytechnic universities” and
“institutes of technology” are, and have always been, similar in status and
structure to conventional universities. So they don’t have the reputational
baggage that our polytechnics have.

But the UK tradition
of polytechnic education, which we inherited in Nigeria, intended for
polytechnics to be no more than intermediate technical and vocational schools
to train technologists and a lowbrow, middle-level workforce. So their mandate
limited them to offer sub-degree courses in engineering and applied sciences.

In time, however, they ventured into the humanities and the
social sciences and then sought to be equated with universities. This request
was grudgingly granted only after the British government set up the Council for
National Academic Awards (CNAA)—composed wholly of people from universities—to
examine and validate the quality of polytechnic qualifications.

Nevertheless, in spite of this elaborate institutional
quality control (which had no equivalent for universities) the higher national
diploma (HND) was treated as only the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree
“without honors.” In university administration lingo, only a “pass” degree—the
lowest possible rank in British degree classification—is considered a degree
“without honors.”

This means that first-class, upper-second-class,
lower-second-class and third-class degrees have “honors” and that the HND is
only equivalent to a “pass” degree. That’s why, traditionally, British
universities did not—and many still do not— admit HND graduates to master’s
degree programs (even if the HND graduates had a distinction in their diploma)
without first requiring them to undergo a one-year remedial postgraduate
diploma program—just like people with “pass” degrees must undergo a remedial
program before being admitted to master’s degree programs.

This invidious discrimination against polytechnic graduates
and manifestly preferential treatment for university graduates, often called
the “Binary Divide” in UK higher education parlance, predictably gave rise to
pervasive feelings of deep, bitter anger and ill-will in the system.

So in 1992, under the Further and Higher Education Act, the
“binary divide” was abolished, and all the 35 polytechnics in the UK were
elevated to universities and given powers to award bachelor’s, master’s, and
Ph.D. degrees. There are no more polytechnics—and the HND qualification— in the UK.

Most other countries
with British-style binary divides have also eliminated the distinction between
polytechnics and universities to varying degrees. In Australia, polytechnics
were elevated to “universities of technology” in the 1990s.

Hong Kong, a former British colony like Nigeria, upgraded
its two polytechnics—The Hong Kong Polytechnic and the City Polytechnic of Hong
Kong—to universities in 1994 and 1995 respectively.

New Zealand also merged all its polytechnics with existing
universities and allowed only one—Auckland University of Technology (formerly
the Auckland Institute of Technology)—to transmute into a full-fledged
university in the 1990s.

Greece abolished its
polytechnics and upgraded them to universities in 2001. In South Africa, from
2004, polytechnics, known as technikons, were either merged with universities
or upgraded to “universities of technologies,” although with limited rights and
privileges.

In Germany, polytechnics can now, in addition to diplomas,
award bachelor’s and master’s degrees in technical and vocational subjects (and
in some humanities and social science courses such as communication studies,
business and management, etc.) but cannot award PhDs.

In Sierra Leone, where polytechnic education began only in
2001, the country’s three polytechnics award bachelor’s degrees in a limited
number of courses, in addition to awarding sub-degree diplomas and
certificates.

Kenya, another former
British colony, merged its polytechnics with older universities and made them
degree-awarding institutions since 2009. And Ghana has announced plans to convert its polytechnics into “technical universities”
starting this month.

In India, Pakistan, and Singapore, polytechnics don’t grant
higher education qualifications; students are admitted to a 3-year diploma
program in technical and vocation fields from what we would call SS1 in Nigeria,
that is, after the 10th year of formal schooling. So Indian, Pakistan,
and Singaporean polytechnics are actually an alternative to traditional
secondary education; they are not higher education institutions like Nigerian
polytechnics are. (India’s “institutes of technology” award bachelor’s degrees
and aren’t the same as “polytechnics.”)

Malaysia’s premier polytechnic, Ungku Omar Polytechnic,
offers bachelor’s degrees in addition to diplomas and advanced diplomas. Other
polytechnics in the country only offer diplomas and advanced diplomas.

What the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Hong Kong,
Greece, Kenya, etc. achieved in the 1990s and 2000s— that is, abolition of the
often unfair binary between polytechnic and university qualifications—had been
achieved in Albert Einstein’s polytechnic in 1909, five years after he got his
diploma there. It was, like most other polytechnics in Switzerland, elevated to
a full-fledged university, although it is still fondly called “Poly” by its
students, staff, and alumni to this day.

Almost no country in the world, except Nigeria, retains the
binary divide between polytechnics and universities. Nigeria has no business
being the lone exception.

So this is my recommendation to education minister Adamu
Adamu: The HND should be abolished forthwith. However, the OND should be
retained to supply the nation’s middle-level labor pool and to serve as a
foundational qualification for entry into B. Tech. degree programs.

Small and mid-sized polytechnics should continue to offer
the OND and big, resource-rich polytechnics like Yaba Tech, Kaduna Polytechnic,
IMT Enugu, Federal Poly Auchi, etc. should be upgraded and converted to
full-fledged universities of technology.

Having taught mass communication on a part-time basis at the
Kaduna Polytechnic 16 years ago, and knowing that polytechnic students are just
as good—and as bad—as university students, I am eager to see Nigeria join the
rest of the world in eliminating the unfair binary divide between universities
and polytechnics.

As Dr. Waziri’s example shows, we’ve been burying our
Einsteins for years. That has got to stop.

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sparked a raucous
socio-linguistic debate in Nigeria after he disclosed in Lagos that Facebook’s
platform now supports the Hausa language. But his words were quickly twisted to
suggest that he said Hausa was a “unique language.”

I looked everywhere on the Internet for the exact quote
where he said Hausa was a unique language. I didn’t find any. This is what Biztech Africa quoted him to have said. “I am proud of putting Hausa
language on the platform. I know with time more languages from Nigeria will
also go live.” The News Agency of Nigeria had a different quote. It quoted him to have said, “I am glad we
support Hausa and we are planning on supporting a lot more languages soon.’’

So let’s be clear that Zuckerberg never said Hausa was a
unique language. Nor did he, as some Nigerian websites misquoted him as saying,
proclaim being “proud” of Hausa.

But even if Zuckerberg didn’t say Hausa was unique, it sure
is a fascinating language for these 5 reasons—and more.

1. Hausa is far and away Nigeria’s, nay West Africa’s, most
widely spoken language. According to several estimates, such as Encyclopedia Britannica,
it is spoken by up to 50 million people both as a native language and as a
non-native language. This means it is outrivaled only by Swahili as the most
widely spoken language in Africa.

2. Hausa is also emerging as Nigeria’s only non-ethnic
language, by which I mean it is spoken as a lingua franca by millions of people
who are not ethnically Hausa. Although Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Fulfulde, and other
major Nigerian languages have tens of millions of speakers, the speakers are,
for the most part, ethnically affiliated with the languages. For instance,
although Yoruba is also spoken in Benin Republic, Togo, and Cuba and many
other Caribbean nations, it is spoken mostly by people who ethnically identify
as Yoruba.

In Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, Cote d'Ivoire, Sudan, etc. Hausa
is spoken by millions of people who also speak their native languages. No West
African language is spoken as a second language by as many people as Hausa is.

There are more than 25 million non-native Hausa speakers,
according to many estimates, and the number is growing courtesy of the
increasing reach and popularity of the Hausa movie industry called Kannywood. That
means there are nearly as many people who speak Hausa as a native language as
there are who speak it as a non-native language. Like what has happened to the
English language, in the near future, there may be more non-native Hausa
speakers than native Hausa speakers.

It is now usual to
distinguish between native- and non-native speaker varieties of Hausa in terms
of vocabulary and pronunciation. There is even pidginized Hausa called Barikanci,
which is spoken by non-native Hausa speakers in military barracks.

Hausa is a lingua franca in 16 of northern Nigeria’s 19
states. The only northern Nigerian states where Hausa isn’t widely spoken are
Benue, Kogi and Kwara.

3. Hausa enjoys enormous language loyalty in ways no other
Nigerian language does. First, most Hausa speakers who are educated in Englishare also educated in Hausa. That is, they can write
as proficiently in English as they can in Hausa. You can’t say that of speakers
of other Nigerian languages.

Second,
Hausa speakers don’t subordinate their language to English or even Arabic. By
contrast, the Igbo language has the distinction of being the only endangered
language that is spoken by millions of native speakers. Typically, languages
are endangered because of the numerical insignificance of their native-speaker base,
or because younger people refuse to speak them. This fate is often suffered by
minor languages with low social and cultural prestige.

But Igbo isn’t just spoken by millions of people in Nigeria,
it also enjoys high social prestige. However, the preference for English and
Nigerian Pidgin English is endangering the language. That is why in 2012 UNESCO predicted that if nothing is done to reverse the trend the Igbo language
could disappear from the world’s linguistic map by 2025. This is obviously
overly alarmist, but several Igbo scholars are taking this prediction
seriously.

4. Hausa has a rich written tradition that goes back to hundreds
of years. For instance, Kano Chronicle,
a palace-centered monthly publication, was first published in Hausa (and in
Arabic) in 1503 and continued for many years before it stopped publishing. It
predated Iwe Irohin fun awon Egba ati
Yoruba (“newspaper for the Egba and Yoruba people”), which was first
published in 1859 by the Reverend Henry Townsend.

5. Hausa has an extensive lexical repertoire. Apart from its
own rich native vocabulary, it has borrowed liberally from Kanuri, Arabic,
Fulfulde, Tuareg, and, lately, English—the same way that English has borrowed,
and continues to borrow from Latin, Greek, Arabic and other languages.

Hausa is also perhaps
the only Nigerian language that has grammatical gender for noun distinction.
Every Hausa noun is either masculine or feminine.

Clarifying the
Misconceptions about Hausa’s Linguistic Superiority

While Hausa is a rich, deep, structurally beautiful
language, it isn’t superior to any language. No language is. As Michael Stubbs
points out in his book, Language, Schools
and Classroom, “It is accepted by linguists that no language or dialect is
intrinsically superior or inferior to any other, and that all languages and
dialects are suited to the needs of the communities they serve” (p. 30).

That Hausa is a fascinating language doesn’t mean that it is
superior to any language— or that other languages are inferior to it. Here are
popular misconceptions about the Hausa language that I’ve decided to explode:

1. Hausa is the first written language in Nigeria. That is
not true. Although the ajami script
(an improvised Arabic orthography) emerged in Hausaland around the 1500s, it is not the first writing system in Nigeria. Ajami was preceded by an indigenous writing system called nsibidi in what is now Cross River and
Akwai Ibom states by hundreds of years.

The earliest record of nsibidi
dates back to more than 1000 years. It was an ideographic alphabet that was
written on pots, calabashes, stools, walls, leaves, etc., which British
colonialists initially derided as "a kind of primitive secret writing,"
but which actually produced an elite corps of literate people who used it to
write court judgments and to chronicle history.

In his article titled “Early Ceramics from Calabar, Nigeria: Towards a History of Nsibidi,” American art
historian Christopher Slogar quoted J.K. Macgregor to have said the following
about nsibidi in the 1900s: "The
use of nsibidi is that of ordinary
writing. I have in my possession a copy of the record of a court case from a
town of Enion [Enyong] taken down in it, and every detail ... is most
graphically described."

It is worth mentioning that a kind of indigenous, nsibidi-like Hausa alphabet that is
neither Arabic-based nor Latin-based was discovered in Maradi in southern Niger
Republic in 2004. It was discovered by a Nigerien Hausa by the name of Aboubacar
Mahamane. But no one has determined when the alphabet was invented. Did it
predate ajami or did it come after ajami? Dr. Donald Zhang Osborn, an
American scholar who specializes in African languages, brought this alphabet to the attention of the world.

2. Hausa speakers were widely literate before colonialism.
This is a common claim that has no basis in facts. Although literacy in Arabic
and ajami existed in Hausaland before
British colonialism, it was never widespread at any point in history. Being merely able to read and write in Arabic isn’t functional literacy. Like most northern
Muslims, I can read and write in Arabic, but I can’t claim to have functional
literacy in the language because I can’t communicate in it.

As Billy Dudley points out in his book, Parties and Politics in Northern Nigeria,
according to the 1921 census, the literacy rate in the north (including Arabic
literacy) was a mere 1.9 percent. By 1952, the literacy rates in Arabic were 10
percent in Zaria; 8 percent in Kano; 4.8 percent in Katsina; 4 percent in
Niger; 2.2 percent in Plateau; 2 percent in Borno; 1 percent in Benue (p. 106).

Like Latin in Medieval Europe, full functional Arabic
literacy in northern Nigeria was the exclusive preserve of a few clerical
elite. It was never democratized literacy.

3. Some commentators suggested that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
privileged Hausa over other Nigerian languages because of Afro-Asiatic
solidarity. Zuckerberg is Jewish, and Hebrew, the ancestral language of Jews,
belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family—in common with Hausa.

Well, while that is true, Zuckerberg’s immediate ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews
who spoke Yiddish, not Hebrew. Yiddish is a Germanic language, although it has
a sprinkling of Hebrew and Aramaic words in it.

4. Modern Hausa people have always spoken Hausa. That is
another misconception. First, according to the late Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman, “Hausa”
isn’t even a Hausa word; it’s derived from the ancient Songhai word for
“southerners,” which makes sense since Hausa people are located south of the
Zarma and Dendi people of Niger Republic (who are the modern descendants of the
Songhai people). The first known use of the term Hausa (in English?) dates back to 1853,
according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Second, a landmark 2009 DNA study by Sarah A. Tishkoff and 21
other researchers titled “The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans” shows that most
modern native Hausa speakers are actually Nilo-Saharans who share genetic
affinities with people from Borno, central Chad, Cameroun, and South Sudan.
They adopted the Hausa language through elite emulation thousands of years ago.
That’s why linguists are often careful not to use language as a basis to make
judgments on ethnic origins.

In my April 3, 2016 article titled “Nigerian Languages are More Closely Related Than You Think,” I pointed out that
“linguistic similarity isn’t always evidence for common ethnic or racial
origin. For instance, although the Hausa people speak an ‘Afro-Asiatic’
language, they have little or no Eurasian element in their genetic profile
while the Fulani who speak a Niger-Congo language have substantial Eurasian
elements in their gene pool.”

Saturday, September 3, 2016

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Twitter:@farooqkperogiWhat you will read
below is the inspirational story of a 29-year-old Nigerian from Bauchi who
graduated with an HND in Electronics Engineering from the Federal Polytechnic,
Bauchi, in 2009 and wound up getting a PhD in Information Security from Purdue
University last month.

His journey started
when he sent me an email in late 2009. He wanted to know if his HND would
qualify him to study for a master’s degree in the US. I told him yes, and sent
him links to two articles I wrote about studying in the US. I also guided him
on how to take the GRE and TOEFL, how to apply to US universities, and how to
get funding for his studies.

I didn’t think what I
did would amount to anything. I have rendered countless such mentorships to
several people. But two years later, I got an email from Ibrahim (now Dr.
Waziri) that he was enrolled in a master’s program at a university here in
Georgia thanks entirely to my guidance, which I frankly didn’t even remember
until I searched my email archive. He even visited me in my home.

A few years later, he
was accepted to the prestigious Purdue University to study for a Ph.D. He
graduated a month ago with high honors and has accepted a well-paying job in
Washington DC. To say I am delighted and proud of this energetic, passionate
young man’s success is to understate the incredibly overwhelming joy I feel.

I requested Dr. Waziri
to write a short piece detailing his journey to serve as an inspiration to many
young people with HNDs who think their educational journeys have ended. Enjoy
it:

Dr. Ibrahim Waziri

Getting a Ph.D. from an American university has always been
dream. But like many HND graduates, I always wondered if I would be able to
continue with my studies in the US with a Nigerian HND. Would the HND be
recognized as the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree? I had no clue until I came
across Prof. Farooq Kperogi’s Weekly
Trust column and blog.

In November 2009, I read Prof. Kperogi’s article titled
“Studying in America: What you need to know.” After reading the article, and
understanding how the process of getting accepted into an American University
was, I emailed him to inquire whether my HND was equivalent to an American
bachelor’s degree. He answered my questions, provided in-depth guidance, and
later published another article titled “HND and American Universities,” which
provided a step-by-step guide on how an HND graduate can continue studying in
the US.

Following guidance
from Prof. Kperogi’s article, I submitted my OND and HND transcripts to the Word Education Services (WES) for evaluation.
(WES is the largest international credential evaluation service in America and
Canada). The evaluation results said my HND was equivalent to an American bachelor’s
degree.

At the time my transcripts were under evaluation, I prepared
for and took my Graduate Records Exams (GRE) and benefitted from the resources
Prof. Kperogi generously shared with me. I got impressive scores. I applied for
the master’s program at Georgia Tech, Southern Poly State University, and
Georgia Southern University. I got accepted into Georgia Southern.

In August 2012, I started my Masters of Science degree in
Applied Engineering (with a focus in Information Technology) at Georgia
Southern University. It is at Georgia Southern that I met my mentor and amazing
professor by the name of Prof. Jordan Shropshire, who is now a Professor of
Computer Science at the University of South Alabama. I worked in Prof.
Shropshire’s lab as a Research and Teaching assistant were I learned how to
conduct research and mentor students. For my work, I got a tuition waiver and a
monthly stipend.

I worked on different projects relating to Network Security
and Cloud Computing, which resulted in my first academic publication. My
performance during my master’s program was really impressive to the point that
I got inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, the oldest and most selective
honor society in the US. This is what my mentor, Prof. Shropshire, said about
me:

“Ibrahim
was my best graduate assistant at Georgia Southern University. He is
intelligent, professional, and responsive. He completes complicated projects on
time and under budget. A patient man, he excels at explaining complex subjects
to non-technical persons. Even under the most stressful conditions I don't
think I've ever seen him lose his cool. For these reasons (and many others) I
wouldn't hesitate to hire him again.”

– Source: Ibrahim Waziri’s LinkedIn profile.

In May 2014, I graduated with my master’s
degree. Immediately after, in August 2014, I started my Ph.D. in Information
Security at Purdue University, one of the best universities in the world. I
worked extremely hard, taking more classes than required per semester. Because
of the rigor of the research training I got from my master’s degree program, I
was able to work on my dissertation while doing my course work. This enabled me
to complete my 90 hours coursework and dissertation in 2 years. This is
unusual. Ph.D. education in US universities typically lasts a minimum of 4
years.

I graduated with my Ph.D. in August
2016. My research areas are Network Security, Cloud Computing, and
Virtualization Security. I have published and presented papers relating to
Firewalls, Phishing Attacks, Cyber Forensics, etc.

While at Purdue University, I worked as
a Cyber Anti-Fraud Analyst for RSA, the Security Division of EMC. And I also
interned as a Cyber Security Analyst for the US Federal Government, working
with USITC in Washington DC. This is what Prof. Sam Liles, one of my professors
during my Ph.D. program, said about me:

“Ibrahim showed exceptional understanding
of how to analyze malware and problem solve in a class he took with me. His
work with volatile malware samples and structured laboratory problems shows a
lot of promise. If you are looking for a savvy thinker and capable individual,
he is the right person. I enjoyed watching his thinking processes and following
along as he solved several complex problems. Almost always forgotten when
recommending somebody, but very important is that Ibrahim is simply a nice guy
and easy to get along with.”

– Source: Ibrahim’s LinkedIn profile.

I currently work as a Security Research
Engineer in Washington, DC. I still consider myself a student and want to gain
more in-depth hands-on experience in the ever-changing Cyber Security field.
But, ultimately, I want to come back home (Nigeria) to help tackle the Cyber
Security issues Nigeria faces. You can look me up on LinkedIn or on my personal
page at iiwaziri.com.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.